Scientists left in limbo by budget delay

Congress passed a bill to prevent a long leap off the so-called "fiscal cliff." But lawmakers merely postponed action on roughly $1 trillion in automatic spending cuts that were set to go into effect this week. The cuts, known as sequestration, are now set to take place in March. Congress' decision to delay work on finding ways to ease sequestration disappoints John Reed, chief executive officer of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in La Jolla.

Reed told U-T San Diego by email Wednesday, "Until a definitive agreement has been reached, the federal agencies that support medical research across the nation will still be largely on hold. Agencies such as the (National Institutes of Health) will be inhibited from issuing requests for applications and offering new competitive funding opportunities, due to lack of certainty about budgets. I therefore hope Congress and the Administration can figure this out quickly and allow our biomedical research community to get on with the good work that we do to benefit humanity."

Mitch Kronenberg, president of the La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology, said, "I am relieved that we have dodged the bullet, meaning that sequestration and the attendant drastic cutback in NIH funding will not immediately occur. This has evidently pleased the stock market, but we have the possibility of sequestration still hanging over our heads. We need longer term solutions, and particularly ones that do not stifle innovation and that will let biomedical research to go forward at a reasonable pace."